“Help yourself if you’re hungry,” I offered.
“Of course he’s hungry,” Sivo proclaimed. “A strapping fellow like him needs his nourishment if he’s to make it on the Outside.” A nongentle reminder that he was to go. Sivo wasn’t much for subtlety. He might as well shove Fowler’s belongings at him and show him the door.
I set the last slice of bread in the basket and dusted loose crumbs off my fingers, and heard myself saying, despite what he’d already told me, “Well, I’m sure he won’t depart until Madoc is on his feet—”
“I’ll leave on the morrow. At midlight.”
He hadn’t changed his mind. Had I expected him to? That somewhere over the course of a day, with warm bread in his belly and walls safely surrounding him, he might have changed his mind?
I turned my head in his direction, still inclined to persuade him. “But your friends—”
“They’re not my friends.” His voice dropped hard and absolute. “We traveled together. Briefly. I have to keep going.”
His deep, rumbling voice wrapped around me, squeezing like a fist. He had to keep going. Alone. That’s what he meant. He wanted no one. Like one of the slippery fish that I managed to seize for a fleeting moment in the stream before it escaped through my fingers. Gone.
There was no keeping him here. He would be leaving. “Why? Why would you want to go out there? It’s safe in here.” Strange, I mused, that I would be using the same argument Perla used against me every day. Perla, who preferred to die in this tower. This thought scudded through me with a wilting shiver. Dying in the tower. Living the entirety of my days within its walls. My presence, my life, unmarked. Unremembered. Unimportant. As though it never happened at all.
“Luna, don’t be rude. The young man has a right to come and go as he pleases. We can’t force him to remain.” In Perla’s voice, buried beneath the muted tenor, was the message for me to simply let him go. Release him and good riddance.
“There’s a place. The Isle of Allu.” Even as he said this to me, there was a thread of something in his voice. Surprise, perhaps, that he felt compelled to justify his actions. “It’s reported to be free of dwellers—”
“Oh, and the sun shines there, too, I am certain,” I snapped. “What a lovely fairy tale.”
And yet even the remote possibility of it intrigued me. Which only infuriated me because I would never know if such a place actually existed. He could leave. He could go in search of this fantasy island. Whether it existed or not, he would never return to tell me.
I turned, my movements sloppy in my frustration. I grasped the lid off the pot, forgetting to grab the mitt to protect my hand. I cried out and dropped the lid.
Air rushed around me as Sivo jolted from his chair. Perla’s heavier gait came forward, too, but there was another movement. Someone who moved faster, his stride fluid as water running free between my fingers.
“What have you done there?” His voice was a deep rasp, curling warmly like peat smoke. Warm fingers circled the bones of my wrist, turning my palm over.
“It’s nothing,” I grumbled, sensing Perla and Sivo hovering close, watching. Whatever they were thinking, they made no move to stop Fowler from touching me or curtail his attention on my hand.
“It’s a burn. What were you thinking? Cooking and handling yourself near a fire.”
I sucked in a breath and held it for a moment, my chest full with outrage over his presumption. “Who are you to chastise me—”
“Someone with eyes to see that you shouldn’t—”
Tears stung the backs of my otherwise useless eyes. I felt them there, but thankfully they did not fall. I did not have to endure the humiliation of weeping in front of this boy who saw fit to judge what I should or should not do.
I reacted without thought. My hand snatched the knife that I used to cut the bread. My fingers circled the hilt unerringly, fitting it perfectly within my grip. It hissed as I swung it, stopping the serrated blade before his throat.
“I can see just fine without seeing. Fine enough to cook. To cut anything. Don’t doubt that I can handle myself. Wasn’t it me who brought you here and saved you?”
The utter stillness of the room told me neither Perla nor Sivo moved. They watched—whether for fear that I would indeed cut his throat or fear that he would turn the tables on me and retaliate, I wasn’t sure, but I liked to think that Sivo was proud. He had trained me well.
Of course they could simply be shocked that Fowler knew of my blindness.
I heard the rustle of fabric as Fowler lifted his arm. The point of the blade gave way under the slightest pressure—but only because I permitted it. If I wanted him dead, he would be.
“Whether my death was so certain or not, point made. I’ll not mistake you for helpless again,” he murmured.